On "judicial activism"

'In every case where a court issues a decision on a controversial matter that produces an outcome which right-wing polemicists dislike, they immediately decide -- literally overnight -- that they are experts in the legal issues which the court had to resolve. Then -- without bothering even to learn what those issues are, let alone bothering to read anything about them -- they start condemning the court's decision as some sort of lawless expression of "judicial activism." In reality, the only ones engaged in "judicial activism" -- which means, I suppose, determining the propriety of a court ruling based on outcome preferences rather than legal analysis -- are the ill-informed critics of the court's ruling, who are judging the ruling based exclusively on their objections to the outcome.' - Glenn Greenwald